This article is part 4 in the series called, “How Web Copy Mirrors Therapy and Healing.” In part 1 I defined “web copywriting” and then showed how web copy can benefit both you and your healing or therapy clients. In part 2 I discussed the role of empathy in compelling web copy and how it’s similar to empathy in your work with your clients. The 3rd article in the series illustrated the importance of building hope in your web copy and how this also parallels the healing or therapy relationship.
This 4th article in the series focuses on the importance of addressing the client’s expected outcomes in your web copy and how this mirrors the therapy or healing process –and, most significantly, how doing this helps you attract clients.
Potential Clients Are Seeking Specific Results
The core reason clients come to you is their desire to get results, which is relief from their pain or suffering. For this reason, before you begin working with any client you obviously discuss the specific outcomes or goals that the client desires. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t know how to help. Once a potential client becomes a client, you keep the focus on these outcomes as you work to help the client achieve them. If you didn’t keep this attention on outcomes, your work would become directionless and your clients wouldn’t get the results they came to you for.
Because results are the ultimate reason people seek therapy and healing services, it is imperative that you discuss results in your web copy if you want to attract clients. After all, why would anyone want to work with you if they don’t know what outcomes they can expect to achieve?
Potential Clients Need to Have Some Idea That You Will Provide The Results They Seek
When you describe possible results or benefits in your copy, the client gets some reassurance that you may be able to help them get the relief they are seeking. As they read about the potential outcomes of working with you, they relax and perhaps even feel excited about the possibilities that await them. It is this desire to have what you describe that motivates them to want to work with you.
When describing potential outcomes in your copy, make sure you don’t sway too much into the “process” of what you do. For example, a depressed client doesn’t want to pay you for a process (i.e to talk about their feelings of depression and get support). While talking about feelings of depression may be part of the healing process, the anticipated outcome (e.g. to feel better and happier) is what the client is ultimately paying for. Therefore, when writing your copy be sure you stay very focused on the specific and concrete benefits that clients are looking for.
The More “Proof” You Provide of Your Results, The Better
How you discuss outcomes of your work is to use testimonials or case studies, and to cite statistics on your effectiveness or the effectiveness of the particular method(s) of therapy or healing that you use. The more you show “proof” of the results of your work or approaches, the more convinced the client will become that they are likely to get the outcomes they are looking for if they work with you.
Sometimes when I discuss the importance of stating outcomes in web copy with my coaching clients, they initially resist this idea because they fear that they will be making promises to potential clients that they might not be able to fulfill. Discussing expected outcomes doesn’t mean that you are “promising” that the client will have any these outcomes. It just means that the benefits or outcomes discussed in your copy are some that other clients have achieved and that any client can potentially attain.
Citing the specific outcomes your clients want when writing your copy will help ensure that you attract not only more clients, but more of the type of clients that you want, and those you are best suited to work with.
Once you have clearly articulated the benefits or outcomes of your services, then you are ready to write your “call to action”. You can read about “calls to action” in the 5th and final article in this series.
To start reading at the beginning of this 5-part article series on how web copywriting mirrors therapy, click here.
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